


Distances

by ashkatom



Series: 100 Follower Ficathon [9]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is meant to be your job. Disciple’s his scribe, Dolorosa’s his provider, and you’re his bodyguard. That’s how it is. That’s what you’re for. And you can’t even manage that regularly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distances

**Author's Note:**

> More promptfic! 
> 
> "Hmm, Suff/Psi, but I should be specific, right? I like happy endings, but I’m afraid I just _love_ torturing my favorite characters, so Psi not being able to protect Suff just opens my black heart right up. I also like when a character with a lot of worldly power (money, guns, psionics…) is balanced by someone with spiritual power (healing, unwinding, convincing people to be better…) So, I would adore a story about the time Psii fails and despairs, then Suff gets them out of trouble."

You hate being you.

This is a universal constant. There’s not much to _like_ about being you. You’re a malnourished death omen on legs, and the fact that you can shoot lasers from your eyes is balanced by the fact that too often, you’re busy being a useless migraine on legs instead.

There’s a soft knock on the door of your room of the shitty payhive you’ve crash-landed in this equinox. You don’t even bother to lift yourself up enough to look over the edge of the recuperacoon. Anyone who bothers knocking is welcome to come in. It’s the ones who don’t that you have to be wary of, and at this point you couldn’t care less.

It surprises you when Dolorosa is the one who leans over the cupe, though. She takes one look at you and shakes her head, laying her hand on your forehead. You close your eyes again and focus on ignoring the stabs coming from behind your eyes. You don’t want to know how Dolorosa dies.

“How bad is it?” she asks.

You contemplate sliding under the over-diluted slime and never coming up.

She combs her nails through your hair, seemingly ignorant of the slime getting under them. It’s more soothing than you want to admit. “We need you today, Psiionic.”

“I can’t,” you finally say. The words echo through your jawbone and thunder in your head, your shoulders tensing up as the pain hits. To your inutterable shame, you can feel tears leaking out from under your eyelids. There are times when you could burn down the world and laugh, and there are times when you’re not even granted the mercy of being able to burn out your brain. You want to throw a tantrum and kick Dolorosa out of your room, tell her to find some other flunky for Signless who won’t be functionally useless, tell them all to stop depending on you because you can’t even depend on yourself, but you can’t even stand. You can’t even _talk_.

“Ssssh,” she says, and rubs your temples in light, comforting strokes. She’s almost professional about it, as are Disciple and Signless from the number of times they’ve had to nurse you through the daylight hours. The pain flares white behind your eyes when she presses down, only to abate and recede a little each time she repeats the motion.

When she stops, you feel marginally capable of opening your eyes again. Dolorosa, blurry from old tears that you blink away, digs into her sash and pulls out a small bag. She shakes out what’s inside into her hand and looks at you. “Would you rather take these yourself or have me feed you?” she asks, only the wryness in her voice saving the comment from being cruel.

Despite the fact that you can’t think, you can still apparently be curious. You manage to haul yourself up so you’re sitting in the cupe rather than just being too long to fit in it properly and look at what she has.

They’re your pills.

You don’t know what they are. The last time you had a dose was when you were still a Helmsman-in-training, and only then because they were pushing you hard and fast because they wanted you to be a showstopper. You know exactly how expensive they are, because you paid for it.

The only reason you don’t snatch them out of Dolorosa’s hand is because you literally can’t.

She hands you a cup of cold coffee to wash the pills down with and politely doesn’t grimace at you when half of it ends up diluting the sopor slime further. As you wait for the effects to kick in, Dolorosa fills the ablutions trap and digs out the cleanest of your clothes. When she passes you to leave, you grab her hand and try to not get slime all over her dress.

“Hey. Thankth.”

She stoops to kiss your forehead. “I’m glad I could help.”

And that, it seems, is all that will be said about your utter uselessness. When the door clicks shut, you peel yourself out of the cupe and stagger in the direction of the ablutions trap.

\--

Signless’ sermon is like all his other sermons, and what was once bright and revolutionary to you has faded into the familiar. Disciple sits in the crowd, two-thirds back with a blank book on her lap that she fills in, occasionally chewing the end of her pen as she watches the reactions of the trolls around her. None of them seem to realise that she is who she is, which is good. You stand behind him, leaning against a wall and doing your best to look imposing. Just because your migraine is lessened doesn’t mean you feel particularly well, but hopefully it’s working in your favour with how much you can feel yourself scowling.

Dolorosa is attending the sermon, for once. Usually she disappears and won’t explain why; you have a fairly good idea since the one time you had to tell her to wash off a spot of purple blood she missed. She, you note with amusement, warrants a chair. Apparently you don’t.

When the sermon is over they leave in twos and threes, leaving at least five minutes between each departure. You like this lot. Good survival instincts. A brownblood and redblood cautiously approach Signless, hands locked together like he’s something to be scared of, and the brownblood asks how she can get highbloods to quit hassling her. Blah blah set your boundaries and enforce them and it’s the highblood being a pailscraper because that’s how they were raised but that doesn’t excuse pailscraping.

They leave feeling better. Your scowl relaxes a fraction.

Disciple leaves with another oliveblood, and Dolorosa is gone when you next think to look. They’ll meet you at the payhive after making sure that it’s safe to stay another day.

Signless sighs and sprawls over the ground by your feet once everyone is gone. You slide down the wall until you’re sitting beside him and close your eyes. It’s probably best that you leave it another few minutes until you leave, too.

“How do you think it went?”  he asks.

“Thame ath usual,” you shrug. “You know DC’th going to have a full report for you.”

He elbows you in the thigh. “Because I don’t value your opinion or anything.”

“I’m jutht the hired muthcle.” You flex one skin-and-bone arm and get a flicker of a grin in response. “It wath fine. You’re great. Pretty sure that the audienthe wath literally worshipping you.”

He pulls a face and changes the subject abominably.  “How’s your head?”

You hunch down defensively. “Fine. DR fixed it.” When he raises an eyebrow at you, you grumble out, “Mothtly.” If you think too hard about it, you can feel the pangs coming back. If you don’t ignore them, you can hear the voices in their muted whispers.

“Come on, you idiot.” Signless stands up and pulls you up. He barely comes up to your chin and for an instant you get the urge to just press him to you and bury your face in his hair and forget the world exists. Like always, you squash it down. “You need to sleep that off. You can use my cupe, it’s stronger.”

“Do you ever think about yourself?” you ask, before it occurs to you to _not_ ask.

“Whose suicidal quest do you think you’re on?” he asks, and opens the door.

An angry tealblood with a stungun is the last thing you see.

\--

The first thing that happens when you wake up is retching. You have just enough control to roll over so you don’t choke yourself to death. The migraine is back in full and brought friends. Part of your shirt is charred and there’s a burn mark on your chest that aches. Hopefully that means it’s not bad, as burns go.

Pathetically, the only thing you can think of is how you wasted the magic headache drugs. The migraine is shutting out your ability to focus, and no ability to focus means no psionic rampage through the halls. You could always just let go and destroy everything, but you don’t even know where Signless is.

You don’t even know where you are.

You recover from the effort of losing everything you ate yesterday and look around. The bars cinch it. Oddly, it feels comforting to be in a prison. You’ve been in a few of those and gotten out again.

Of course, you weren’t incapacitated by your own brain laughing at you.

“Psi, is that you?”

You look at the thick stone wall to your left and then crawl over there. “Thpeaking. Hey, SL.”

“So what do you think?” There’s a pause as Signless makes a gesture that he doesn’t realise you can’t see, because he’s incapable of not talking with his hands. You close your eyes and imagine him, letting the rest of your thoughts drift. “Definitely at least a four, right?”

“The pattern of brickth ith very pleathing. Four point five,” you respond. He hasn’t been in as many cells as you and Disciple, so your review is clearly more accurate. “Lookth like thomeone made our pattern.”

“Time to switch it up,” he agrees. “This is just a wild guess, but from the sounds of you throwing up I heard, you’re not going to be blasting us an escape route.”

His matter-of-fact tone freezes you. This is meant to be your job. Disciple’s his scribe, Dolorosa’s his provider, and you’re his bodyguard. That’s how it is. That’s what you’re _for_. And you can’t even manage that regularly. The fact that you’re the only free adult psionic with any power means you’re the best he has, but the best he has is useless and broken.

“Psi?” he says.

“I’m thorry,” you say, quiet and choked. The voices in the back of your head laugh and tell him you’ll fail him a thousand more times and ways. “I’m tho fucking thorry.”

“Hey,” he says, sharply. “It’s fine. I’m just planning.”

You stay silent and try to breathe. A migraine and a depression attack are not what you need, ever, and especially not now, but if you can’t get the both of you out, then who will?

“Hey!” Signless slaps on the wall, and you jump. It hurts. “Put your hand on the third brick up, second brick in.”

“What?” you say.

“Just do it,” he says. You put your hand on the brick below the specified brick. “Stop being a stubborn jerk and put it on the right brick, you waste of a pep talk.”

You growl at hearing the words from someone other than yourself and slap your hand on the right brick, even as you wonder how he knew. “What are you even doing, you inthane hot-air bellowth?”

He laughs, and it tears right through you. You’d hate depression if you could muster up the energy. “Just think about how much distance there is between us. It’s what, twenty centimetres between our hands? We’re further away when we sit across a table. This is nothing, Psi.”

“I can’t do it,” you snarl, snatching your hand away from the wall. “Do you even-”

“I _know_ ,” he says, forceful and soothing. “That wasn’t what I was saying. I was _saying_ that as long as you’re nearby, I know we’ll come through. Neither of us will let anything happen to the other.”

You are done. You are _so_ done. You’ll turn this block to rubble if you have to. Until then, you’re going to have to let Signless do the driving.

“Yeah,” you say, and put your hand back against the wall. Twenty centimetres has never felt so insurmountable.

\--

Eight hours later, you’ve determined that Dolorosa and Disciple can’t rescue you, or they already would have. You’ve also gone back to contemplating burning your brain out, and this time you don’t even have sopor to take the edge off.

“Psi?” Signless asks. He’s been checking in every fifteen minutes since words got too hard. You manage a comforting gurgle of consonants in response. “Gone grimdark yet?”

You laugh. Unfortunately, this covers up the footsteps of your captor as she makes her way down to the lonely cells at the end of the hallway where you’ve been stashed, away from any other prisoners. In case you start a riot, you presume. You realise someone else is there when Signless says, “I know you.”

“Shut up,” is the hissed response.

“You’ve been to two of the gatherings. You asked good questions.” Signless sounds faintly wounded.

A lock clicks open. The same tealblood who stungunned you and brought you here steps in front of your cell, a ring of keys in her hands. She starts going through them and trying to match them to your lock as Signless steps out of his cell. He looks in much better condition than you.

“What are you _doing_?” Signless says.

The tealblood stops jamming keys into the lock and looks at him, and instead of anger you see desperation on her face. You also realise how young she is, since she barely matches Signless in height. “I needed the money, okay? So I figured bring you in, collect the money, and break you out again.” She swallows.

Signless closes his eyes and you can practically hear the _save me from the young and well-intentioned_. It’s debatably a good thing that you can’t contribute to this conversation, because it’s debatably a good thing that her head isn’t decorating the walls.

“There wasn’t any money, was there?” he asks, more gently than you expected.

She shakes her head.

“Asking the Condesce to part with money is like asking the moons to part with the sky.” He places a hand on her shoulder. “If you can capture me and Psi and then break us out of a prison, you’re more skilled than this. I’ll forget your face provided you use those skills for helping people instead.”

“But-” she says, and you seriously cannot believe she is arguing now.

“People you help,” Signless continues, implacably, “are likely to help you in return. Like I am helping you now in thanks for bringing the keys.”

She slams the keys against his chest and takes off running.

“That went well,” Signless says, bending to pick up the keys. “Either she knocked out the guards or we’re good entertainment. We should hurry either way.”

It takes trying four keys before he finds the one that unlocks the cell. You manage to stand mostly under your own power with a little help from a wall and no help from your inner ear. As soon as you stumble your way out of the cell, you grab Signless by the shoulders and pull him against you, burying your face in his hair the way you wanted to earlier. His arms wrap around you without hesitation, one hand rubbing your back.

You are injured, dirty, smell disgusting, your head hurts so much that walking a straight line is impossible, your muscles are so tense that you’re going to need to lie in a hot bath for a sweep to un-tense, and there is still the very real risk of being chased down by angry subjugglators. Signless makes it, if not better, then at least bearable.

He takes your hand, weaves his fingers with yours. “See? Nothing to it.”


End file.
